CCRMA at Stanford, anyone students or faculty around these parts?

3 points·thealphanerd··4 comments

Looking to get an idea of what kind of grades, portfolios, and GRE scores students had. Also curious what type of references you used.<p>Also would be interested in hearing anything positive or negative any has to say about the MA/MST

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I attended CCRMA for two years as an EE PhD (post-masters) student. I really didn't like it, which sucked, since in theory it is a really interesting place. First, my interests were heavily in UI stuff and interactive interfaces, but the EE side of it is REALLY heavy in just signal processing and modeling. Having said that, Prof Julius Smith (one of the main EE faculty there) is a great guy.

Second, from the music side of things, there was a really strong bias against any form of popular music and towards heavily experimental music. The word snob comes to mind.

Third, the place just had a weird and uneasy energy - not welcoming and just strange. Another friend of mine who was there at the same time commented on this to me also, and also stopped the CCMRA programme.

YMMV - this was in the 1990s

To answer your specific question though, I had a BA and MS from a so-so state school, average (B-) grades at undergrad and very good grades in grad school (3.9/4.0 ish) and 700+ on each of the GRE sections (just the general one, I didn't sit the specialized ones). I had one publication in a peer-reviewed journal as well.

It is unfortunate to hear that you didn't have the best experience.

Have you heard anything about similar programs at Berkley or UCSC?

no i haven't, but i should say that despite my experience, it is pretty hard to go wrong at Stanford

thanks for taking the time to write me :D

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